This paper describes marriage and partnership patterns and trends in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa from 2000-2006. The study is based on longitudinal, population-based data collected by the Africa Centre demographic surveillance system. We consider whether the high rates of non-marriage among Africans in South Africa reported in the 1980s were reversed following the political transformation...

In this paper, we examine whether the business cycle plays a role in marriage and divorce. We use data on Spain, since the differences between recession and expansion periods across regions are quite pronounced in that country. We find that the unemployment rate is negatively associated with the marriage rate, pointing to a procyclical evolution of marriage; however the response of the divorce ...

Choice mechanisms and social networks, including "marriage markets", seem well-suited to be modelled using agent-type simulations. Few real-world empirical examples are available in the public literature, particularly those using human populations of size. We reviewed partnership models in both the micro-simulation and agent-based literatures. We then empirically implemented an algorithm derive...

This paper examines how the marital behaviors of Hui Muslims respond to varying conditions of local ethnic marriage markets. Specifically, we explore marriage patterns indicating adherence to two Islamic norms: universal marriage and endogamy. We measure marriage market conditions by local concentrations of Hui and we estimate discrete-time hazard models of marital outcomes using the China 2005...

While many models have investigated the role of competitive mate selection processes in human marriage, few have addressed the potential for assortative processes to explain the observed demographics, as well as simultaneously investigating divorce. To explore the possibility that assortative mate selection processes may explain patterns of both marriage and divorce, we developed an agent-based...

During the past century the U.S. family system has seen vast changes--in marriage and divorce rates, cohabitation, childbearing, sexual behavior, and women's work outside the home. Andrew Cherlin reviews these historic changes, noting that marriage remains the most common living arrangement for raising children, but that children, especially poor and minority children, are increasingly likely t...